


Make hay

by MarquisdeDiscotheque



Series: Plays and tumbles, shore to shore [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Cornelius Hickey Is His Own Warning, Fluff and Smut, Haircuts, M/M, beer and skittles!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:41:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26561563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarquisdeDiscotheque/pseuds/MarquisdeDiscotheque
Summary: ‘Hickey had found Billy Gibson in his cabin, and drawn the curtain across almost lazily, to give them both a bit of privacy. He knew an open curtain would arouse less suspicion than a closed one – but it was all bustle as the watch changed over, and besides, the officers who might want for Gibson at this hour were either on deck or abed. He’d checked. Lieutenant Irving with his sanctimonious little head stuck in a Bible somewhere in the officer’s mess or his cabin. Lieutenants Little and Hodgson on deck, a fine pair, one with a face like a kicked puppy and the other like a puppy that ought to be kicked.So, they’d not be disturbed. Not for a few hours.’Or, Gibson cuts Hickey’s hair and gets a good caulking in return. Featuring a chat with Jopson, regarding Hickey's less-than-inconspicuous nocturnal activities.
Relationships: William Gibson/Cornelius Hickey
Series: Plays and tumbles, shore to shore [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931755
Comments: 16
Kudos: 42





	Make hay

Hickey had found Billy Gibson in his cabin, and drawn the curtain across almost lazily, to give them both a bit of privacy. He knew an open curtain would arouse less suspicion than a closed one – but it was all bustle as the watch changed over, and besides, the officers who might want for Gibson at this hour were either on deck or abed. He’d checked. Lieutenant Irving with his sanctimonious little head stuck in a Bible somewhere in the officer’s mess or his cabin. Lieutenants Little and Hodgson on deck, a fine pair, one with a face like a kicked puppy and the other like a puppy that ought to be kicked.

So, they’d not be disturbed. Not for a few hours.

It was strange, this luxury of space. He’d had it, before. He’d had a room twice this size, paid for with dubious gains but paid for nonetheless, by him, and he’d left it for a hammock no wider than a coffin and infinitely more difficult to get into. They’d laughed at him, the first time he’d tried to clamber up into it. _Laughed_. On land he’d have taught them not to laugh, but here he’d had to grin and bear it and laugh along. Well, he’d practice at that too. Nothing new.

The Sandwich Islands, the boy Hickey had said. When they popped out the other side of the Northwest Passage, Oahu’d better be fucking marvellous. He could take another year listening to men snore and frig themselves in the hammocks beside him – he’d put up with far worse conditions, yes – but only as a temporary discomfort in pursuit of something better.

If the situation did not resolve itself before the coming winter, Hickey thought he’d have to give it a guiding hand. He knew nothing of ice, but everything of men.

He knew everything of this man. He should; they’d been close for six months or more, and he’d had sod all else apart from caulking to be getting on with. With his face like a saint and his delicate limbs, he knew as much of Gibson as any man might, Gibson who was always watching with those doe eyes of his. Gibson had approached _him_ , that first time. Now that was a turn. Whenever he caught sight of Cornelius – and Hickey had to get used to that, this mouthful of a name, whispered to him down in the hold until he almost believed it or until Gibson came – his face softened, imperceptibly.

Gibson wouldn’t have been Hickey’s first choice when they’d departed Greenhithe in a sea of strong, capable arms and handsome jackets, but he’d proven himself a fair match and a good fuck since then. And it wasn’t as if the men were exactly throwing themselves at Hickey. Not yet, anyway.

So Gibson would do. And Gibson had his charms. That soft, brackish voice: _Call me Billy_. Those long fingers. A puppyish willingness, but with the measure of a man, not a boy.

When he’d sidled in, Billy had been trimming his beard over the basin. _His_ basin, in _his_ cabin. A nice luxury, that. He’d looked up, and Hickey had shushed him and closed the curtain with a grin.

“Cornelius. I–” Billy touched Hickey’s face, charted his cheekbone with delicious slowness. For all the rush about the ship, Hickey enjoyed this ease. After all, they were trapped in the ice. They weren’t going anywhere. The movement above and below decks was only to maintain their stasis, stop the ice from sinking them altogether, keep the ship in any semblance of shipshape while they waited for a thaw. They were treading water in this desolate place, and they all knew it. It was an existence the man Hickey understood far better than he’d ever understood sailing. “You shouldn’t keep coming here,” Gibson said softly. But still his hand wavered and caressed, sliding down Hickey’s arm.

“You’d miss me if I didn’t. Besides, we’re just having a friendly chat. A nice evening spent studying the Bible for self-improvement, your officers would like that, wouldn’t they?”

“You know as well as I do that wouldn’t wash. Besides, our captain and first lieutenant are hardly… zealots.”

Hickey said nothing, but moved off and studied the Bible on Billy’s shelf, the few other books, his sewing kit, and made no effort to leave.

“Oh, fine. Sit down, then, and let me finish this, I can’t very well leave it half done.” Billy gestured to his beard, curling about his chin in uneven tufts. He hummed under his breath, working neatly.

He could be a delightful man, when he tried.

Hickey sat on the bed, more a cot, really, and let his feet swing. He wanted to roll a cigarette just to have something to do with his hands, but it’d be a waste of tobacco to light it here. He shrugged off his jacket and loosened his necktie.

“There. D’you want the sink, Cornelius?” Billy smiled, one of his wan smiles. “Your whiskers.” Hickey felt at his moustache, starting to creep over his lips. “I can feel it, you know, against me,” Billy said, voice low. He couldn’t tell whether this was meant to be erotic or admonishing, or a bit of both.

Hickey eyed him sideways. “All right, yeah. Hadn’t had a beard before I came here, had I.”

“You hadn’t?”

“No. Thought it’d be good for the cold, but– well.” He rolled his eyes and looked to the faint mist in the air, even here, further from the engine room and the stove as they were. Nothing quite kept the cold out, except the heat of another man’s body. “But my sisters thought it very dashing, when I left.” The babble came easily; he’d always had a quick tongue for lies.

“I didn’t know you had sisters.”

He sounded almost offended, as if Hickey’s reticence to talk about his life was some personal slight. Gibson was ravenous for details of life before they met, continually jabbering on about his own. Hickey usually filtered it out, letting Billy’s murmurs wash over him when they had the odd post-coital cuddle, before he inevitably got too restless. He’d gotten quite good at nodding in the right places without really listening.

“Well.” Hickey shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d be interested. It’s not like women exactly preoccupy your time, is it.”

Billy laughed quietly. He surrendered the scissors and his space in front of the mirror, and when they manoeuvred past each other Hickey brushed his hands up against Billy’s sides, stroking his narrow hips. He was in shirtsleeves, the billowing fabric coming loose from his trousers at the back. Not a bad view, Billy Gibson’s arse, in trousers or out. Hickey’d seen it often enough, although not as often as he might. They rarely took off more clothes than necessary. Perhaps in Oahu he’d see all of that naked body at once, rather than piecing it together in parts like an old shirt.

The lamplight here was soft, unhurried, and cast his face into strange warmth. Hickey surveyed it, something like proud. He’d mocked gentlemen with their vanity, but there was something to be said for coming up in the world and dressing like you knew it. He fancied their long coats, the officers, the deference that came with them. Even the stupid hats. The only difference between him and the officers, the only real difference out here. He’d like a stupid hat, and then everyone’d have to knuckle their forelock at him for a change.

Billy watched him and he watched Billy back in the corner of the mirror, until he had to stop glancing at Billy because he was trying to trim a mouthful of beard off his face. Billy kept looking.

Once he’d done a decent enough job, he put down the scissors and examined the hairs in the sink, his mixing with Billy’s in a fine dusting. As if they’d a domestic life. Would it have been like this, on land? No, probably not; he’d have used Billy, as he used everyone, as everyone used him. Here they couldn’t be rid of each other – and there was something in that.

As he ducked over the bowl to spit out a few stray pieces, his hair swung into his face, unsettled after hours at work. He pushed it back. It’d started to curl at the ends, almost to his shoulders. He might as well do something about it here, rather than in the crush of ABs that passed for space in the galley.

Billy watched him pick up the scissors once more and awkwardly feel for the hair at the nape of his neck.

“Would you like me to do that?”

A good wife, Gibson. Maybe on land he’d have kept him after all.

“Ta. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

Gibson snorted. “Don’t pretend that’s ever worried you, Cornelius.” Voices outside stopped him from saying whatever he might’ve next. They waited for the voices to pass by, stilled and breathing close. There was something thrilling about almost being caught together. They weren’t doing anything conspicuously abnormal – it was still within the bounds of propriety, or thereabouts – but their hush was damning in its own way.

Billy stood behind him. He could almost rest his head on Hickey’s, such was their height difference. It made having Billy bent over a crate all the more rewarding, when they did, though when Billy insisted on kissing him before they got to it he had to crane his neck upward to reach. He didn’t mind the kisses, not as much as he’d used to. He liked dragging Billy’s gaze down to him. Liked feeling all of the man’s attention on him at once, every bit of it, unadulterated and for him alone.

Still got a crick in his neck, though. Annoying, that.

Billy stroked a hand through Hickey’s hair, and let it wander below his shirt to the place where neck met shoulder, thumbing over the skin. He came up close and gently kissed the spot, the side of Hickey’s neck under his stiff collar. He’d never have let a man do this before, never be so gentle. All the same, it felt good to relax into Billy, and watch themselves lock eyes in the mirror.

“Get on with it, Mr Gibson,” he teased. He could swear Billy blushed.

Billy took the scissors, looking more coltish than he usually did attending the officers. He’d no gloves on, not here. “How’d you want it? Short?”

Hickey considered. He wasn’t attached to his hair – to anything, really, apart from his life and his future prosperity, and now Gibson, a little, in a way that surprised him – but he’d come to like it. He liked how he looked in his dark jacket, a good fine sailor, with naught but a hundred odd men and some icebergs to see him.

“No.” He turned his head. In another man he’d call it arrogance. “About my chin, should do it.” Billy smiled, perhaps thinking of the times he’d grasped at Cornelius’ hair when Cornelius knelt in front of him and took him into his mouth in the dark of the hold, or once or twice kneeling at his bunk, on long nights like these. Hickey allowed it, as he seemed to allow, rather than invite, activity that put him at any sort of disadvantage.

Billy combed Hickey’s hair out until it hung loose around his face, smoothed it with his long fingers. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before starting to cut. They’d not been this close without having their hands down each other’s trousers in a long while.

He worked with all the efficiency Hickey expected of a man he’d seen sew a button onto a shirt in the middle of an arctic squall, barely looking up when the ship lilted alarmingly sideways. Hickey was ashamed that he’d been throwing up at the time, that entire night and the next day. He couldn’t believe his constitution, usually so strong, had failed him there.

Billy played with a strand by his ear. “You look like Commander Fitzjames like that.”

Now that made him laugh. “Is that your idea of flattery, Mr Gibson? We couldn’t be as different if we tried.” He’d only seen Fitzjames a few times, really, when he and Sir John had come aboard to dine with Crozier, which was not often. He had suspicions that the fine commander, no, the _darling of the Navy_ itself, with his shiny epaulettes and polished vowels, had a few secrets of his own. He didn’t share those suspicions with Billy. If he noticed, he noticed.

He suspected too that Fitzjames would’ve been an easier captain to work under, but he didn’t envy the men on a ship with Sir John in charge. The sermons, oh, the endless sermons. At least Crozier bothered with as little as he could get away with in that regard. Soused and charmless as he was, Crozier had some certain undeniable magnetism that the others lacked. Hickey almost liked him.

He stood in half-silence mulling this over, punctuated by the groan of the ice (for that was continual, and had become soothing after so long), the rustle of Billy’s sleeves, the clip of the scissors and the sound of Billy dropping pieces of reddish hair into the sink. He moved to the side and Hickey almost flinched at the cold metal touching the back of his neck.

“Sorry. Try not to move, though, or I’ll end up nicking you.”

Hickey smiled, and deliberately canted his hips back ever so slightly towards Billy, pressed close to the front of Billy’s trousers. Just for a bit of fun.

That’s how it’d started, a bit of fun. This was something else. Billy was always the needier of the two of them, but showed marked restraint now. Like he was indulging in some way, looking after Hickey like this. He _liked_ it, Hickey thought. Liked being told what to do, liked serving men, being useful. Only a man who liked it would put up with being a steward.

There was something piteous about that. A man should be his own master. He’d said that once to Billy, who had replied with something about Hickey mastering the art of caulking a privy first.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Billy jolted Hickey out of his reverie, and Hickey whipped his head round, startled.

“Do you want to lose an ear, Cornelius?” Billy’s voice was dry.

“Not particularly. You’re bloody slow, though. Just cut it and be done, Billy, I’d not come here to be pampered like a lady.”

“Stay still, then. It’s different to mine; it’ll show if it’s not even.” Hickey quite liked Billy’s curly hair. It reminded him of that bastard dog, Neptune, but nicer. At least Billy could clean up after himself. “What _were_ you thinking about?”

“Nothing concerning you.”

He watched Billy’s reflection bite its lip and felt a few errant pieces of hair fall down the back of his shirt (or rather felt them dropped there, and Billy failed to contain a smile when Hickey sniffed at the itch). He could feel the cold on the back of his neck, bare, now that wasn’t something he was used to. He shivered a little, despite his woollen layers.

At last Billy seemed happy and stepped back, leaning against the wall. “Look all right?”

“Looks very fine, Mr Gibson.” Hickey used his fingers to comb his hair back, just long enough to tuck behind his ears. It did look fine, neat and tawny and like a proper gentleman. He turned out an overtly coy smile.

“You’re a good mate, Billy.”

Billy’s lip curled upward. His own coyness was real, it seemed, or at least part of it was. He was too used to being unnoticed and unnoticeable.

They’d enough of coyness.

Hickey moved to push Billy against the bed, and shoved him down to sit. All propriety forgotten, now; they danced around each other often enough on deck, there was no sense in doing it anymore here, even if it had been a change of pace, a reminder of a world left behind.

He straddled Billy’s lap and bowed his head to kiss him, biting at his lower lip, sucking at it. Billy’s mouth opened easily (virtually as easily as his arse, thought Hickey, in a moment of fondness) and Hickey licked into it. He could feel Billy moaning into him, hands grasping at his shirt to pull his body nearer. His hips desperately angled upward, moving to catch the friction of Hickey’s straining prick against his own through layers of clothing.

Hickey let one of his hands wander between them, and tugged at the buttons of Billy’s trousers. One of them ripped off in his haste, but Billy didn’t seem to notice or to care. When Hickey’s hand found his prick he gave a muffled groan, stopped kissing for a moment to rest their foreheads together.

Hickey dragged his hand up and down, agonisingly slowly.

“Please, Cornelius.” That fucking name. Billy put his face against Hickey’s shoulder and kissed at his neck proper this time, raking down his back with blunt nails and drawing him as close as two clothed men could be. Well, almost as close. When he started to shuffle around and buck into Hickey’s hand, urging it harder and deeper into the recesses of his trousers, Hickey could tell what he was really angling for. Billy’s lips met his ear, bit at his earlobe, whispered again hot and desperate: “Please.”

Hickey pulled off and stood up, Billy almost mewling at the sudden cold on his prick. Hickey wiped the precum off his hand onto Billy’s trousers, and then went to the desk to blow out the lamp. Their eyes strained to adjust to the new darkness – darker by far than the wide, snowlit nights on deck.

This marked the point of no return. Two men in the dark cannot pretend to Bible study. Hickey welcomed it. Some men liked having congress in the dark because it was cheap, or because they didn’t want to see your face, but that wasn’t it. (Anyhow, their light was courtesy of the Discovery Service, and he’d happily take what he was owed from them.) He liked the dark for the simple release it seemed to give other, weaker, men, nothing more.

He had no need of that. He was good at hiding in plain sight, and he would not apologise for liking other men, nor feel small for it.

He felt his way to the bunk, grappled for an innocuous tin that sat behind the Bible on Billy’s shelf. He could see the vague outline of Billy already getting onto his hands and knees, glancing back over his shoulder in expectation. Always eager, he was. The glow from outside the door rendered him like one of those pictures you get at churches, not that Hickey had seen many.

He removed his shoes. He would not, normally, having had the need for a quick getaway drilled into him, but where could he run to here? The bed creaked when he clambered into it, crouching behind Billy, noise lost to the ice. He felt for Billy’s sides, his waist, pulled him into his lap. He could sense himself stiffening where his crotch rubbed up against Billy’s arse, a pleasant respite from the steward’s sharp angles.

Billy turned his face for a kiss, and Hickey let him. The angle was awkward and the kiss more a clash of lips and teeth, urgent and messy. Their beards grazed against each other.

Before long Hickey’d had enough, grabbed at Billy’s jaw to still him. He rubbed a thumb over Billy’s lips, pushing a couple of fingers into his mouth, feeling the tongue run over them, sucking at them. The temptation to turn Billy over and fuck his mouth then and there was present, yet they’d not had time in a bed for a long while, might as well give it some service. He pushed his fingers in and out until saliva was running down Billy’s chin.

When Billy began to keen into him and bite at his fingers, he shoved Billy’s trousers and his drawers down roughly, and pushed him onto his forearms.

He knew Billy would be closing his eyes now, pretending that it wasn’t a thin piece of fabric separating them from dozens of others. His face was pressed into the pillow to muffle his groans; Hickey briefly entertained the vision of suffocating him. He didn’t want to, and it didn’t do anything for him particularly, but he thought about it nonetheless.

He encircled Billy’s hole with his fingers, toying with it, sliding up and down and finally worked a finger inside, slick with Billy’s own spit. He heard Billy gasp against the pillow. The skin of his thighs was clammy, sweat turning cool, trembling with the strain of holding himself up and the thought of being fucked. Hickey opened the tin with one hand and his teeth, and then pulled away to rub a dob of the grease between his fingers.

Thin and clever, his hands were. He’d been as proud of his lightfingeredness as his crafty tongue, back when there was much to steal. He’d nabbed bits and bobs on the ship, but it never felt as good as pickpocketing some rich cunt up at Covent Garden. Pickpocketing one still abed after a night of debauchery, then disappearing into the crowded streets just another hawk with heavy pockets, even better.

He smiled at the memories.

Billy’s skin was soft under him, warm where they’d been pressed together. He stretched Billy out, with two fingers and then three, coaxing as he might a horse. But he should’ve known not to be soft – Billy didn’t mind, Billy who shoved back onto him hard, body quaking as Hickey grazed over that spot inside him that sent his legs trembling. Hickey’s own cock rested heavy against his hip, still in his trousers. He would attend to his own pleasure in time. No hurry.

It was nice to have a change of season; he’d been willing to let Billy fuck him, if that was what it took to have a man out here, but this was much better.

When he finally unbuttoned his own trousers and took himself out, he was hard from the friction alone and the thought of what was to come. Breath turned to fog before him in the cold, panting; they needed no words here. Both knew what they’d come for, what they liked, and this was the only act that could render Hickey bereft of the backchat he so usually enjoyed. Back in England a sharp slap across the cheek here and a bloody nose there had taught him not to, had taken the fun out of it.

He pulled his fingers out, greased his cock and pushed into Billy. Slow at first, then with roughness, hands digging into those narrow hips and fucking him into the mattress.

Billy took it well, always had. Hickey wasn’t his first man. He wondered how many more he’d been with, in bunks like these, in the quiet and the semi-darkness, holding back their cries. For perhaps the first time in his life, Hickey felt grateful for warm summer nights in alleyways and on docksides and small secretive molly-house rooms with open windows, where two men could fuck in the open and not have to bite back their notes of pleasure.

And oh– oh. God, but it felt good. He pushed further in, feeling Billy shudder under him. He would take Billy out by the sea, the warm Pacific coasts – they would fuck right there, with nobody to see, nobody to hear, and he’d shout it to the waves, how good this man felt. He’d leave bruises above Billy’s collar and Billy his, and they would be marked for each other and nobody would stare. They’d be sprawled on the sand naked and in their glory.

But in the meantime, this was nice enough. Warm, leisurely, Billy keening a little as Hickey fucked him. He held Billy’s hips, felt them dig into the flesh of his palms. It must’ve hurt both of them. Billy only made a startled noise into the pillow, something that could’ve been a hiss or a moan.

His hand grasped in the semi-darkness and found Hickey’s. Hickey thought Billy would guide him to touch his own cock, but he just entwined their fingers and pulled Hickey’s body closer.

“Cornelius.” The whisper was very small, very faint in the darkness. No idle groan – it tilted up at the end, a question.

“Mm?” He fucked into Billy particularly hard, draped himself right over his back to come closer to his face and hear him.

“Can–” he could hear hesitancy, the way Billy liked to resolve his words in his head before he spoke. They shared that. “I– ah.” He gasped as Hickey rolled his hips. “I’d like to see your face.”

Well. It’d been a long time since he’d done that.

If they were to be found in this state, it wouldn’t much matter which way up. In for a penny and all that. The Articles were very sketchy in that regard, amusingly so, _buggery and sodomy with man or beast_ all one to them. (Who was going around fucking beasts, Hickey wondered. If the Articles had to mention it, that meant somebody had. The idea of the men growing overfond of Neptune made him almost laugh aloud.)

“All right.” He kissed Billy’s shoulder, leaving a wet mark on his shirt, and then pulled himself out, slow. Whilst Hickey was up for a bit of messing, his acquaintance with Billy had given him a newfound appreciation for how hard it was to clean sheets in the Arctic. 

Billy turned and let himself down onto his back, shrugged off trousers and drawers entirely and lay watching, questioning, his prick red and aching in the dim light. Hickey met his eyes. He’d have to take off his trousers as well, now. He did so with little ceremony.

The body before him was lovely, in its own way, wanting for him and only him. He traced an ankle, a long shin-bone, the curve where it met Billy’s knee and the soft skin of his inner thigh. He acted as if he were seeing these parts of a man for the first time. In a way, he was. The light was different here, the air tasted different to England, the body unusually familiar.

Billy smiled up at him. Hickey didn’t know what to do with it, this searching gaze not borne of disgust or greed or even pity. It was unlike others he’d had willingly, where they’d shared of mutual lust and gone their own ways after. Only the gaze of a man who liked him as a man. Expecting nothing more, but returning time after time, moulding Hickey into the kind of man you might reasonably expect something of.

He bent down, and the last thing he saw before he took Billy’s cock into his mouth was Billy’s eyes widening, hand scrambling for purchase at the edge of the bunk. He licked at the underside, hummed appreciatively at the length and took more. With one hand he got a couple of fingers back inside Billy, fucked him like that, pinned under him.

When being coerced or paid Hickey had somewhat resented the act, but the truth was he was good at it and he liked it, which was more than he could say of caulking. He liked filling Billy and being full of him. He liked knowing he was doing something that felt unerringly right, and that it was appreciated in turn.

Billy tasted alright, too – clean and warm and hard in Hickey’s mouth – and rutted like an animal as Hickey licked and sucked and touched him. Altruism was not in Hickey’s nature, but this was good. Billy was good, overwhelmed and overwhelming. Completely at his mercy. Hickey splayed his other hand over Billy’s stomach, under his shirt, where he could feel the taught planes of skin and a light smattering of hair, muscles beneath contracting in line with his breath. Billy would likely have freckles there, and all across his chest and shoulders if he lay in the sun. When they got to the Sandwich Islands Hickey would find out.

Billy’s hand tangled in his hair, tugging the shorter lengths out of place. Hickey looked up and brought his mouth off.

“In me.” The merest whisper. “In me, please.”

So he brought Billy’s legs up to hook over his shoulders and positioned himself back against him, slid in and fucked until Billy could look at him no more. He closed his own eyes and let himself be taken by the sensation alone, feeling only the heat where their bodies met and the way Billy moved around him. What a pleasure, to have this man at his command.

He could’ve stayed that way for hours, caught between his lover and the walls of the cabin, caught in unutterable indulgence. But he could hear Billy’s breath catching fast, opened his eyes to the dim view of Billy’s cock leaking and stones tightening. Billy reached for himself and Hickey let him.

Hickey tried to hold on for longer, even after Billy had come all over his stomach and the tails of his shirt, but that was a fool’s errand. For the first time he regretted keeping their shirts on, that he mightn’t feel his warmth chest to chest.

When he came, it was with a groan muffled into Billy’s shoulder. He bit down at the skin he found there, hard enough to bruise. His crisis ebbed from him, like so much water wrenched from an old washcloth, and then there was only darkness.

Billy made a little moan when Hickey pulled out of him, away from him. A clutter of long limbs drew him in and they lay together in the dark, gasping against each other. Branchlike and thin, that’s how Billy was; sometimes Hickey thought if Billy rubbed his legs together too quickly he might set himself afire by accident. He wasn’t a comfort to hold, not like some men he’d had, but no matter.

Hickey stared at the ceiling. He disliked this bit, disliked the release, if he was honest. For it was a release into what? Nothing had changed.

The lead-up as he chased his pleasure, those elongated seconds before, when he could feel it close but not quite spilling over the edge– now that was enough to quieten his mind. Those were moments of hopeful promise, which in Hickey’s experience often exceeded the delivery of such promise itself. Afterwards he just felt the world settling into its old routines around him. That, and sticky.

Gibson put out a hand to touch Hickey’s oversore, softening cock, and Hickey hissed and pushed the hand away. Perhaps he should just button up his trousers and leave. But that seemed too cruel, somehow. Though Hickey scarcely knew what contours his life would’ve taken on if not for cruelty, it did seem a shame to leave a warm bed and a welcome embrace.

In a gesture of goodwill he put an arm around Billy and pulled him close, until his long legs tangled up in Hickey’s and his head rested on Hickey’s shoulder. They could have that, at least. His body smelled pleasantly of soap and sex. Billy’s warmth seeped into his chest, his breathing rhythmic and regular, lulling them close.

He fell asleep in that position, tucked up against the man he cared for more than any other in this place.

The next bell woke them – only an hour or two had passed, watches shortening as it became intolerable to stay on deck for long. If anyone asked, he’d say he’d been straining over the privy, courtesy of Goldner’s tins. (He wished they were in some hotter clime so he might use the excuse of wandering the deck for air, or ascending the maintop to stage a lookout, or at the very least succumbing to some tropical fever and making a brief fictionalised visit to the sickbay. The cold forbade such whims.) 

Billy stirred when Hickey began to fidget and move off to look for his clothes. Where Billy’s shirt was loose at the neck his shoulder showed pale and lovely, bruised from the bite. Other marks where Hickey had nipped at him flushed dim purple in the haze, and gave him a sort of pleasure. They’d still be there, beneath a high collar, when he knotted the officers’ cravats, when he poured their drinks or washed their shirts.

“Shh, shh love. Stay there, you don’t have to get up.” Drawers, trousers, necktie, jacket, shoes. The clothes were cold and almost stiff from being left strewn on the floor but he buttoned and tied as best he could. A final glance to the mirror, then a final glance to Billy. Billy moved up onto his elbows for a drowsy kiss, and Hickey had to give it him. He quirked a smile. Hickey left Billy to his bed, and listened for a quiet moment to leave the cabin.

He thought he’d been subtle, too. As he moved down past the other cabins it seemed nobody was about, nobody to witness his little grin as he walked into places he shouldn’t be walking.

Too late he noticed a figure at the end of the hallway, moving towards him. Could he– no, he couldn’t go back into Billy’s cabin, not now he’d been seen. The figure advanced and in the waning lamplight Hickey made out Thomas Jopson, looking far too put-together for the hour at hand. It would be Jopson. He never seemed to sleep. Always fussing over something or other, as if it mattered, attending where men ought to look after themselves. Hickey schooled his face into something resembling pleasant, and nodded as they came closer.

“Fine night, Mr Jopson.”

Jopson paused in front of him, bristling at the syrupy, overfamiliar tone. He had taken an instant dislike to Hickey; he disliked shirkers, and Hickey was always owing duty. But it was more than that – a feeling, an instinct, learnt well before his time at sea. He looked as if he was debating whether to leave, but finally turned to loiter in front of Hickey. He gestured with his head for them to move away from the cabins, towards a storage alcove, where sound might not travel.

Hickey was caught off balance for a moment – twice in one night? The universe must like him. And he’d not say no to it.

“Look, I should tell you, because nobody else will.” Jopson spoke like he was forcing the words out through clenched teeth, though his face remained placid. “You smell like him, you know. Word gets ’round. You should be more discreet.” He frowned. “Do you want a lashing, really? You’ll get caught, if you carry on like that.”

Hickey relaxed and smiled, though of course he didn’t at all mean it. “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, Mr Jopson, especially not with the thin walls round here. Keep your nose out of my business and I’ll keep mine out of yours, how’s that?”

Jopson’s complexion coloured, a solicitous little blush in his cheeks. He was pretty enough, Hickey thought, if uptight. Word got around about the steward too. Hickey pitied him; he could arse-lick from here to Russia and not get what he so obviously wanted.

But he didn’t look away, even when Hickey gave his frankest stare, the kind that would send most men running if they knew what was good for them. Wasn’t a pushover, then. Good for him. His eyes were of some uncanny light hue, which reminded Hickey of nothing so much as the seracs tearing across the landscape outside, fucking the sky with their glassy peaks, all that ice that might well rip them apart and take their useless ships down with it. The colour sat oddly in Jopson’s face. Hickey found only contempt there.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Come off it, Mr Jopson. You’re not so subtle as you’d like to imagine, either.”

Jopson shook his head, as if he were amused. “You don’t threaten me.”

Hickey crowded him, leaned an elbow against the wall right next to Jopson’s head, bracketing him in. He saw something of himself in Jopson. How he’d have been, maybe, if things had been a bit different. If he was willing to bend over and flatter and take the thrashing of a life set out for him without argument.

They were close enough to feel the warmth off each other.

“I’m not threatening you. It’s a long voyage, to be pining for someone who’ll not have you. Perhaps you’d attend me instead, sometime, since the captain is so obviously blind to your qualities? I could make it worth your while.” Hickey raised his eyebrows, with a smile that said _take it or leave it, makes no difference to me_.

Jopson leaned in, and with no warning squeezed Hickey’s balls through his trousers, so hard it hurt. A look so visceral that Hickey could barely decipher it crossed his features.

“I don’t think so, Mr Hickey.”

The little sod let go of him and walked away, without waiting for a reply.

Hickey watched him leave, biting his lip to avoid hissing in pain, or worse, laughing. So that jibe about Crozier hit the mark, then. Interesting.

He straightened his necktie and smoothed his hair, marvelling at the array of behaviour he’d witnessed on display tonight. He enjoyed the unpredictability of this sailing lark more than he’d thought he would, and would continue to, Jopson and the lot of them be damned. He’d show them, they’d all see.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the idiom ‘make hay while the sun shines’, ie. grab your opportunities while everything’s still rosy. Cold boys, take note. It’s also a nice song by Joanna Newsom, if anyone fancies a listen. 
> 
> I keep thinking about ‘the midnight caulker’ video someone made which is floating around tumblr. Truly inspired! If that was you… thanks.


End file.
